


and the collision of your kiss (that made it so hard)

by doctorkaitlyn



Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [8]
Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, POV Jamie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28198104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: Jamie can’t leave. Not yet, at least. Even though she’s completely soaked, even though her skin is covered in goosebumps, even though she’s never felt this cold in her entire life, she can’t leave yet.Not until she says goodbye.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956031
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33
Collections: Ladies Bingo 2020





	and the collision of your kiss (that made it so hard)

**Author's Note:**

> written for the 'water spirits' square on my [Ladies Bingo 2020](https://ladiesbingo.dreamwidth.org/) bingo card! considering how sad this show made me, you'd think I would at least _try_ to write happy fic, and yet here we are.
> 
> title from [Cemetery Drive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02W8DAnKvlA) by My Chemical Romance.

By the time that Jamie crawls back onto the shore, clothes soaked completely through, water dripping from her hair and filling up her nostrils, what little sun remained when she stepped out of the cab has been overtaken by heavy storm clouds and the impending arrival of night. 

She was so _close_. Even though she knows that water can distort, that the shadows thrown by the dark sky and the waving seaweed played tricks on her eyes, Dani still looked so close. Just a few more inches, and Jamie would have been able to brush her fingertips against Dani’s pale face, push away the loose strands of silken hair floating loose around her head, curl her arms tight around Dani’s waist and pull her to the surface. 

She would have been able to bring her _back_.

But it didn’t matter how many times she tried. It didn’t matter how many times she swam back up to the surface to pull cold air into her aching lungs. It didn’t matter how many times she flipped around and dove towards the bottom, where Dani glowed like a beacon. She got so close, but before she could close that final gap, before she could make contact, a barrier that she couldn’t see no matter how hard she squinted stopped her. 

What hurts the most is knowing that it's Dani putting the wall up. It’s Dani, doing what she’s always done: trying to keep everyone safe. 

Trying to keep _Jamie_ safe. 

Hooking her fingers into the mud coating the shore, Jamie hauls herself forward, arms screaming in protest. She pulls and pulls until her feet are free of the water, and with that, what little energy she had rushes out of her. Her body goes slack, and she slumps against the ground. Her entire chest aches, like there’s a metal band compressing her ribs, and she takes greedy gulps of cold night air, filling her lungs back up. Eventually, once the pain has died down some, she rolls onto her back and stares up at the sky. It’s raining, and while Jamie can feel it striking her face, it makes no difference to her. 

She’s not sure how long she lays there before she hears the cab going back down the drive, having apparently run out of patience with her not returning in a timely fashion. At least she paid him ahead of time – she hopes that favor is enough for him to have left her luggage in a relatively sheltered spot, rather than out in the rain. 

Not that it matters. Nothing matters anymore, because Dani is gone. While, if precedent is anything to go by, her body will eventually rise from the lake, walk up the drive, into the manor house, and back again, that won’t be Dani. It’ll be the Lady of the Lake, following her preordained path, tracking muddied footprints through the halls of Bly and sinking back into the water, borrowing Dani’s body for her purposes.

Dani won’t be coming back across the ocean with her. They won’t go back to their entangled life, to their tiny apartment. She won’t feel Dani’s fond smile directed at her as she fusses over a plant that most people would give up on. There will be no more movie nights together, no more late night strolls, no more lazy weekends spent cuddled up in bed together. 

There will be no more.

Eventually, the sky shifts from dark gray to stark black. The rain stopped some time ago, but the clouds have remained behind, meaning that there are no stars shining down. There’s just blackness, as if the void filling the space behind her ribs has escaped and blotted out the entire sky. Normally, she would keenly feel the absence of the stars, but on a night like tonight, she doesn’t think that she could handle their beauty. Somehow, it would feel like mockery. 

Her wet clothes are stuck to her like cling film, and as the temperature continues to drop, shivers rack her frame from head to toe. The mud is clammy underneath her back, and some part of her knows that if she doesn’t rouse herself soon, she’s liable to spend the next few days fighting off a horrid case of pneumonia. 

She supposes she should care more about that possibility. But right now, she finds it exceedingly difficult to care about anything that isn’t the utter sense of despair flooding through her, choking her, winding its spindly fingers tight around her heart and lungs until all she can feel is pain. 

It hurts. _Everything_ hurts. 

With that realization, the tears start in abundance. They burn from her eyes and singe into her cheeks, drip down over her jaw. The feeling of them gathering on her face, mingling with snot as her nose begins to run, rapidly grows irritating, but she doesn’t make any attempt to wipe her face clean. If she tried, she would only end up dragging mud all over herself. Moreover, the thought of exerting that much effort exhausts her. She’s already going to have to drag herself out of here, somehow get back to the village – she can’t afford to waste energy on an action as useless as wiping away tears, not when those tears are only going to be rapidly replaced by more. 

“Dani,” she whispers towards the sky. She doesn’t dare lift her head to look towards the lake – she’s worried that she might see Dani climbing out of the lake, already beginning her silent journey towards the house. More importantly, she’s worried that if she looks at the lake for too long, she’ll talk herself out of her despair. She’ll convince herself that, if she dives back in, if she pushes her exhausted limbs a little harder, she’ll be able to reach Dani this time. 

If she dives back in, she’s almost certain that she won’t come back out again. The exhaustion will sweep over her, and she won’t try to fight it. She will willingly sink to the bottom of the lake, let Bly claim her as well. 

But Dani wouldn’t want that. She said as much in the note that she left, the last piece of herself that she gave to Jamie. She said that she didn’t want Jamie to follow after her, that she wanted Jamie to try and find happiness again, try and move on with her life. She explicitly asked Jamie _not_ to come after her.

And, well, since Jamie selfishly denied that request, the least she can do is try to honor Dani’s other requests, even though she highly doubts that she’ll ever grasp happiness between her fingers again. 

Even though she had so many years to prepare for this, even though she knew that this day was coming (no matter how hard she tried to deny it), she can’t imagine growing old in a world where Dani isn’t by her side.

But Dani would want her to _try_. 

But she can’t leave. Not yet, at least. Even though she’s completely soaked, even though her skin is covered in goosebumps, even though she’s never felt this cold in her entire life, she can’t leave yet. 

Not until she says goodbye. 

“Dani,” she says again, throat raw from sobbing, eyes swollen and painful, even now that the tears have trickled to a stop. Part of her hopes that, at the sound of her name, maybe Dani will find herself drawn back out of the lake. Maybe, if Jamie waits long enough, she’ll hear a gentle splash as Dani emerges from the water. Maybe she’ll hear the slurp of the mud as it engulfs Dani’s bare feet. 

So she waits for a few moments, forces herself to take some deep breaths and ignore the vicious chattering of her teeth. But no new sounds come. There’s only the noises of her own body, the steady ribbits of frogs off in the reeds, the drip of water from the trees and the rush of wind. 

“Poppins,” she continues, trying to keep her voice steady. She closes her eyes, sick of staring up at the dark, blank sky. “God. I always thought you were going to tell me off for calling you that.” Unexpectedly, a smile crosses her face as she remembers the first time she called Dani that, the first time the nickname slipped from her lips. She remembers the way Dani’s face scrunched up slightly, a flicker of confusion crossing her face, before it clicked in her brain and she gifted Jamie with a small smile. It had been such a tiny, tentative thing, but in retrospect, now that Jamie knows the trauma that Dani was sorting through at that point, the ghosts she was running from, the fact that she got that smile at all is a miracle. 

“I miss you,” she says, clenching her fingers into the mud around her, hoping like hell that it grounds her, because it feels like she might slip away otherwise. “I doubt that’s gonna go away anytime soon. Maybe not ever. I think I’m going to keep finding things about you to miss for the rest of my life.” Her mind returns to their apartment, their safe haven of a home. She can picture it in her mind’s eye, and wherever she looks in her imaginary tour, she sees pieces of Dani that have been left behind. The magnets on the fridge that she liked to bring home on their travels. The cookbooks that she’d used over the years, splashed with stains and filled with notes scribbled in pen. The dresser in the bedroom filled with her clothes, all neatly folded. The smell of her on the sheets. 

Jamie is going to have to confront all of those things when she returns, and she suspects that each of those confrontations is going to cut like a knife. The combination of all of them will make this goodbye feel like nothing at all. The actual process of leaving Dani here will pale in comparison to what she has waiting for her back home. 

But that’s assuming that she even makes it back home, if the cold and grief don’t kill her first. 

“I miss you,” she says again, and even though her eyes and head ache, more tears start falling from the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know how to do this without you. I…” Swallowing heavily, she says, “I thought we’d have more time.” 

Not only is it foolish, she knows that it’s a _selfish_ belief to have. The time that they spent together was a gift. Dani was able to hold off for so long, and it feels like, by admitting that their time together wasn’t enough for her, Jamie is doing all of Dani’s incredibly hard work a disservice. 

Well, sue her. Maybe she is selfish. But if wanting to spend every last moment of her life with someone as beautiful and kind and patient and _strong_ as Dani makes her selfish, then Jamie will wear the moniker with pride. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wish I could have done more. I wish I could have taken this on for you. I wish that it was me down there and not you. I know you probably wouldn’t want to hear that, but that doesn’t make it any less true. You deserved better than this, my love. You deserved _everything_.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and she gives up on talking. Instead, she lets herself cry. She lets herself _sob_ , loses herself in every damn feeling threatening to split her chest open. She drowns in unfairness, in despair, in agony, in _rage_. 

Somewhere along the way, when her body and mind are simply too tired to feel anymore, she drifts off into a sleep that is, thankfully, dreamless. 

&.

When she awakens, the air has warmed slightly, and the sky is beginning to glow on the horizon, deep navy blue turning into a pale orange. She’s still cold, and her bones ache from the damp and the pain of lying on the ground, but, surprisingly enough, she’s still alive. 

She’s still alive, and Dani is still gone. 

With much effort, she pushes herself up into a seated position. She can feel her hair stuck to the back of her head, plastered there by mud, and she knows that she’s going to have some explaining to do if she runs into anyone on her way back into town. Technically, if her phone is still charged, she could call a cab, but that would raise more questions than she’s willing to answer, so walking it is. 

Besides, it somehow feels appropriate to walk away from Bly for the last time.

She takes a final look around her, surveys the overgrown sprawl of the grounds, the ones that she used to lovingly maintain, takes in the calm surface of the lake in the dim morning light. She commits the place to memory, so that she can bring the scene into her mind whenever she wishes, so that she’ll always know what it looked like on the day that she said goodbye. Only once she is satisfied does she move so that she’s on her knees. Stretching out her fingers, she skims them across the surface of the lake and closes her eyes. 

She knows that Dani is down there, unseeing eyes open and staring, but Jamie chooses not to think of that. Instead, she thinks about how Dani looked in the morning, when the sun came through their window and struck her sleeping face, when her hair looked spun from gold and her skin glowed as if it was absorbing the light itself. 

“Goodbye, Poppins,” she murmurs quietly, letting the tips of her fingers dip below the surface of the lake. “I love you.” 

She waits a few moments, long enough for the words to sink to the bottom of the lake. Against all odds, she hopes that, in some part of her mind, a part that is closed off to all but herself, Dani hears her and smiles. 

And then, she stands up, turns her back on the lake, and starts heading towards the drive, taking the first of several steps that will eventually lead her back to America, already knowing that, no matter how many steps she takes, her feet will never lead her home. 

Her home died with Dani.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
